Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update

I am taking some time today to indulge in some foodiness, going through my big backlog of cooking mags and watching DVRed episodes of Food Network. I haven’t done this in several weeks, and it’s a nice means of mentally relaxing while laundry’s running and hubs is over at his parents’ with the dogs.

The house is CLEAN right now! Hubs did a mega clean on Friday before I got home (wasn’t that nice?) and we set up a last minute dinner party for last night and finished the job. So cleaning for Thanksgiving will be a breeze. We definitely need to get back into the groove of having people over on a regular basis to make us KEEP the house in this kind of shape.

Of course this meant that I seriously overate, and now I feel like a blimp. This is not a good feeling to have less than a week before Thanksgiving. Upside, all I really want is vegetables, so that’ll be the focus. And LOTS and LOTS of water.

I’m giving myself a Christmas present early by hiring someone to paint my kitchen and redo the inside and outside of the front door. The door was originally stained and varnished, but this sort of finish does NOT hold up well in Mississippi weather and had largely peeled off on the outside. And on the inside, the back side of the door is scratched to hell and back from the prior owners’ dog. He stripped and painted the front already and it looks fabulous. He’ll do the kitchen tomorrow and the backside of the door on Tuesday, so it’ll be all done by Thanksgiving. Merry early Christmas to me.

The writing has been a mixed bag this week. Very low word count because I was in grant world at work all week and it simply overtook my brain. BUT, I did a lot of brainstorming with Susan and Andrew this week and I figured out how the final fight scene would go, what the Big Bad’s weakness is, and a key component to the entire trilogy that’s been eluding me since inception. So I consider it a good week on that front. And I FINALLY finished The Scene That Would Not End. Not that it’s actually a LONG scene, but it went through several incarnations before I could get the logic of the dialogue right. It’s still not perfect, but I can move on now.

I don’t think I’m going to make my end of November deadline. I would if it wasn’t a holiday and family wasn’t going to be in town, but it is and they are, and after turkey day, I’m headed to my mom’s to help her put up her Christmas tree and do some prep for guests she’s got coming first week in December, but basically I’ll end up losing a week of writing time to the whole thing. So it’ll probably be a week into December when I finish. So not too far off. It’s worth having taken the time to sort out these details.

The last two months I’ve broken my Most Words Written In A MonthRecord. This made me incredibly happy. But it’s also made me realize I probably can’t expect this EVERY month. And that’s fine. I’m still going to have an epic level of production by the end of the year, and Riven should be finished sometime in January.

Kait Nolan

Kait Nolan is stuck in an office all day, sometimes juggling all three of her jobs at once with the skill of a trained bear—sometimes with a similar temperament. After hours, she uses her powers for good, creating escapist fiction. This Mississippi native has something for everyone, from short and sweet to Southern contemporary romance to action-packed paranormal—all featuring heroes you’d want to sweep you off your feet and rescue you from work-day drudgery. When not working or writing, Kait’s hanging out in her kitchen cooking and wishing life were a Broadway musical.

3 thoughts on “Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update”

The time off from writing might end up being a blessing in disguise. You might be away from the keyboard, but your mind is still working on the problem, and it just might help you gain some additional insight or yield a few more options. Whatever the case, have a good Thanksgiving and enjoy your time with your family.